EDITORIALS: Facing drug abuse, as a community

Friday

Jul 6, 2012 at 2:00 AM

There are no names in this editorial. All you need to know about that is this: a month ago, a mother of a local teenager who has been caught up in drug abuse found the courage to speak openly to the town’s human services committee about her family’s struggles.

Patriot Staff

There are no names in this editorial. All you need to know about that is this: a month ago, a mother of a local teenager who has been caught up in drug abuse found the courage to speak openly to the town’s human services committee about her family’s struggles. Tears were shed around the room, and confidences shared.

It was a rare inside look at the problem of opiate abuse that the committee has been studying for months. As it did years ago with the issue of homelessness, members will make a report to the town council. The report, it is hoped, may lead to allocation of further resources to solve a problem that touches on public health, public safety, and a whole raft of related concerns.

“The hold addiction has on these kids is very tight,” the mother said. “[Drugs] are so available to kids. Their lives fall apart, and they suck their families down with them.”

It’s frightening, she said, to realize how much children know about drugs. Her son “can tell you what each one is; the color, the size, the letter on it.”

Getting the drugs is all-important. The mother told of her son stealing from his younger brother, who now is “dealing with the same shame and guilt his parents are because of his brother’s addiction.”

For her older son, it all started in his junior year of high school. A friend was given a Percocet prescription for knee surgery and shared his pills.

“He said it helped him escape anxieties and stresses,” the mother said of her son. “It became a habit.”

A habit that moved through the variety of drugs available illegally.

“I was finding ballpoint pens taken apart all over the house,” the mother recalled. “They inhale the heroin with ballpoint pen parts.” Her son “sold everything of value to him” to buy drugs.

“Everybody just has to find their rock bottom place,” the mother said, and that’s what her son did, “I’m tired of living like this,” he told her on the way home from an appointment at the Boston clinic. “It doesn’t make me happy anymore.”

For her son, the road to recovery includes attendance at a Children’s Hospital clinic known as ASAP, for Adolescent Substance Abuse Program; college courses; and a return to a responsible job in town that an understanding supervisor held for him when he started treatment

“The clinic wants them to be using when they start,” the mother said. “He was buying Suboxone on the street, trying to hold off the cravings. They expect them to relapse. They expect them to be honest.”

ASAP “works with the whole family,” the mother said, calling for such programs on the Cape. She says the town needs a “parents supporting parents” group around the issue, such as those in Falmouth and Mashpee.

“We must support each other in order to stop it,” the mother said, and she has found support, from her minister, other parents, the Boston program, and now from the human services committee.

It doesn’t matter what school this young man went to; as townspeople, he is one of our sons. It doesn’t matter what village his mother lives in; as townspeople, she is our sister. It doesn’t matter that some of us remain untouched by this scourge; as a community, we all have an interest in our mutual wellbeing.

Members of the human services committee will be standing before the town council someday soon to give their report and ask for action. It would be a beautiful thing if they weren’t standing alone.